THE NEW YORKER 47 of starting a club called United Soap Decora- tors of America We b 0 ugh t Sweetheart from the Manhattan Soap Company seven years ago. We also manufacture D u t c h Cleanser, Cuticura, and several detergents." We remarked that we supposed an} kind of soap could be deco- rated. "Sweetheart lends itself peculiarly to deco- ration, because it is oval- shaped and has curli- cues," the Purex man said. "There's a tre- mendous surge of thIs art In the Los Angeles area. Have a drink." > .. "" ^ F IFTEEN minutes later, where should we be but in the Gold Room of the Sheraton- East, deep in a Sake Tasting Party, which was being given by the Officers of the Japan Sake Cen- tral Association? "Sake is to the J apa- nese what champagne is to the French Clnd vodka is to the Russians," Mr. Jiro rrokuyama, director of public affairs of the Japan Trade Center, told us "You can drink it warm, in little cups, in the traditIonal Japanese fashion, or you can ha ve it in the V\1 esternized versions of 'on the rocks' or in a sake Martini, with a base of gin and a dash of orange b o " Itters. W E took ours on the rocks, with two drops of lemon juice and a plate of shrimp tempura, and stopped in at the New York General Build- ing, at Park A ven ue and Forty-sixth Street, to attend a Weyerhaeuser Com- pany Open House for its new, con- solidated Eastern offices. "Our head- quarters is Tacoma, but five of our Eastern divisions have been centralized here," said Mr. V\1 alter A. Torpey, sales manager of the Ne,,, '"r ork sales office of one of them, the Folding Car- ton Division. He showed us around a hive of Weyerhaeuser-manufactured American-black-walnut cabinets and walnut, teak, silver-birch, and knotty- white-pine panelling; presented us wIth a press kit, whose contents read, in part, "The panelling conveys the character and serenity of towering forests;" and introduced us to Mr. George H. V\T ey- erhaeuser ex-ecutive vice-president in charge of Wood Products and Tin1ber- ....... t :. ..- :.x .. '''- ., ') y . . , ' i .' , * '/ .J I .. y ((I could accept being replaced by a machine. But being replaced by H ubze B eekner !" . lands. "We make such a variety of products that I find it difficult to be even rudimentary in my knowledge of them," Mr. W. said serenely. C LOSING our eyes as we passed a towering mass of canapés, we reached the street, taxied home, and dressed for a Lucullus Circle dinner in the Royal Ballroom of the Americana. " D o d ' h S k T . " 1 n t see you at tea e astIng, we said to Mr. C. C. Philippe, Lucul- Ius's founder and secretary, as we hegan to address uurself to twenty-two French, Italian, Austrian, and Portuguese wines and brandIes. He smiled a weary Lafite Rothschild smile. . O VERHEARD in a particularly crowded section of Macy's, har- ried mother to restless five-vear-old: "You've got to behave, Arthur, because I have no time for psychology todav." Director W E had a talk last week with Tony Richardson, the thirty-five-year- old English director of the new hit play "Luther" and of the forthcoming Brecht play "Arturo Vi." Catching him when he had just emerged from the opening of the first and was preparing to submerge himself in rehearsals for the second, we pinned him down brieB y in hi" suite at the Algonquin, where, wan- dering around in white socks, All-Amer- . ican chino pants, and a black wool pull- over on top of a white shirt open at the collar, he looked like a combination of all those gaunt, underfed student-poet characters in Chekhov plays, though nut tortured. "Performances sometimes go down on opening nights, but everyone in 'Lu- ther' was in peak form," he told us, speaking with a slow, soft Oxford ac- cent that contained one or two North of England overtones "And the critics are much better here than in England. The} have a sort of literateness and per- ception, an awareness of the play, and a sense of responsibility that we don't get in England, where the critics-in the tradition of belles-lettres, supposedly- write just in order to write an amusing piece. Critics here seem to be especially good ahout English plays; perhaps they're not quite as good about American plays, possibly because they're too close to them. I don't like critics much, actuallv, in any of the arts. There are times when they don't seem to have the foggiest idea of what it's all about They don't get it. Critics and creative people are bound to hate each other. They can't help it. They're on different sid-es of the fence." As soon as his opening was over, Mr. Richardson told us, he had got started on the sets, costumes, and auditions for the next play. "I like to have several things going at the same time," he said. "I work best when I can switch from one thing to another" Pre,;sed for a rundown on some of the